Star Wars: Bloodline Shows Us How Quickly Things Went Wrong for the Solo Family

Claudia Gray's Star Wars: Bloodline is hitting shelves next week and as we wrote earlier, you can expect a number of big moments to unfold over the course of the book. Crucially, Bloodline will clear up a few of the points that were left painfully ambiguous in the The Force Awakens, namely how The First Order came into existence and what the general political climate of the galaxy was at the time.

But, while the book is still just under a week away from giving us these answers, a free three chapter excerpt has been released which gives one particularly eye-opening piece of information.

Bloodline is set around five to six years before the events of The Force Awakens, and it's told solely from the perspective of Leia Organa, who at the time is a Senator in the Galactic Senate of the New Republic. What's interesting about the first three chapters of Gray's book is that it shows us that just five years out from the catastrophic events of The Force Awakens, everything is trundling along just fine for the Solo family. Leia does express some frustrations about the fact that Han spends so much time hopping around the galaxy, but she seems to understand that such activities are part and parcel of being married to a scruffy nerf-herder. There's also no talk of their son Ben having any troubles, which seems to suggest that his training with Luke Skywalker is still progressing.

Now, it's important to remember there are other references to the Solo family throughout the rest of the book, but this still suggests that everything went very wrong very quickly for the Solo family. In just five years (or probably less), the Solo's have gone from being one of the galaxy's major power families to seeing divorce and dark-side rip them apart. If everything is still A-ok for Leia, Han, and Ben just 5 years out, it would suggest that things are also running along nicely for Luke as well. In the movie it feels as though Luke has been missing for many years, but such is his importance to powerful figures within the galaxy, it's perfectly feasible that he was only ever missing for a year, maybe two.

(Credit: LucasFilm)

What is also very likely is that Snoke has already been grooming Ben for a place by his side at this point. Similar to how Palpatine manipulated Anakin, it's likely that Snoke has been working from the shadows, slowly showing Ben the many faults of Jedi teachings.

Interestingly, knowing that Ben is still Ben at this point also rubbishes the theory that it was Kylo Ren who placed Rey on Jakku after he laid waste to Luke's academy. If Kylo Ren has still yet to surface just five to six years before The Force Awakens, there's simply no way it could have been him that dropped Rey off on Jakku when she was roughly seven years old. But come one, you didn't really buy that theory anyway, did you?

Star Wars: Bloodline is released on May 3rd, and we strongly (like, really strongly) suggest you get out and buy a copy.